Metrics question
You are the PM of Instagram. How would you incentivize people to post more stories?
- Meta
- Metrics
- Medium
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What this question tests
Whether you can design incentives that target real creation friction rather than just adding generic rewards.
How to approach it
- Clarify the goal: increasing the number of users posting Stories, not just increasing views or time spent watching them.
- Segment users: those who never post versus occasional posters, since the barriers likely differ between the two groups.
- Identify the friction for non-posters: self-consciousness about being seen, and uncertainty about what's worth posting.
- Prioritize lowering the stakes of posting, since fear of judgment, not lack of tools, is the more likely core barrier for many users.
- Propose a concrete feature: close-friends-only Stories as the default option, and simple, low-effort templates or prompts to reduce blank-page anxiety.
- Define success metrics: percent of users posting at least one Story per week, with a guardrail on posting frequency among already-heavy posters to ensure the change doesn't just shift behavior.
What a strong answer includes
- Diagnoses the real barrier, social anxiety about visibility, rather than assuming more creative tools alone would solve it.
- Segments non-posters from occasional posters, since a single incentive won't address both groups equally.
- Proposes a concrete low-stakes default, close-friends-only Stories, directly targeting the identified friction.
- Names a specific success metric, weekly posting rate among previously non-posting users, not just overall Stories volume.
Common mistakes
- Assuming better creative tools alone will drive more posting without addressing the social anxiety barrier.
- Measuring only aggregate Stories volume, which could rise from existing heavy posters instead of new posters.
Likely follow-up questions
- How would you test whether close-friends-only posting actually increases first-time posting?
- What would you do for users who tried posting once and then stopped?
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More questions from Meta
Learn the skill behind it
Chapters of the AI PM course that teach what this question tests.
- Chapter 9: Prove it paid off: outcomes, economics, and pricing
- Chapter 2: Data fluency: SQL, logs, and reading the truth yourself
- Chapter 14: Get the job: the AI PM interview loop